SCIENTISTS have moved one step closer to the plot of the hit movie The Matrix by developing technology which is powered by energy created by the human body.
The winds of winter
The polar vortex is an enormous, three-dimensional ring of winds that surrounds the North and South poles during each hemisphere’s winter. These winds are located about 10 to 30 miles (16 to 50 km) above Earth’s surface, in the layer of the atmosphere known as the stratosphere. They blow from west to east with sustained speeds easily exceeding 100 mph (160 kph). In the darkness of the winter polar night, temperatures within the polar vortex can easily get lower than minus 110 degrees F (minus 79 degrees C).
Fortunately for everyone, the stratospheric polar vortex itself won’t appear outside your front door. The polar vortex does influence winter weather, but it is more like a domino: when it is knocked over, it can start a chain of events that later result in wild weather.
Credit: Steven Burrows
For nearly a century, scientists have worked to unravel the mystery of dark matter an elusive substance that spreads through the universe and likely makes up much of its mass, but has so far proven impossible to detect in experiments. Now, a team of researchers have used an innovative technique called quantum squeezing to dramatically speed up the search for one candidate for dark matter in the lab.
The findings, published today in the journal
Nature, center on an incredibly lightweight and as-of-yet undiscovered particle called the axion. According to theory, axions are likely billions to trillions of times smaller than electrons and may have been created during the Big Bang in humungous numbers enough to potentially explain the existence of dark matter.